whats up acturus?, you sound like YOU lost the plot, since when has the Queen been hanging out with Hells Angels?, on some paranoid conspiracy site somewhere?.
I don`t need you to lecture me on electronics or how power distribution works, I do it for a living, power distribution is relativley simple heavy engineering and not likely to fail to that extent at the drop of a hat or because some ones pickup ran into the local substation.
nuclear reactors do NOT scram (emergency shutdown) if they lose grid power, since they have backups to ensure they keep running in all contingencies (it costs a LOT to shutdown and restart a reactor), they wouldn`t be much use as a scource of power if a powercut stopped them working DUH!.
all I was saying is that it MAY have been more than just a powercut, it would be logical, if it was a terrorist attack, for the authoritys to say nothing until power was resumed, you wouldn`t want several million people in a blacked out city at night panicking, best to leave em be and make nothing of it.
it`s not paranoia, we know terrorists have plans to disrupt power, attack nuclear power stations, poison water supplies, plant dirty nuclear bombs etc, just recently we found people would willingly aid someone to shoot down Airforce One with a SAM (at least middle eastern people based in the UK where willing to supply a missile/launcher, no questions asked), and we know they can easily strike at infrastructure since you can`t guard all of it, all of the time, they trained people to attack buses, trains, planes, make bombs from trucks, blow themselves up, snipe from high vantage points, destroy power and water distribution, gas passengers on subways, derail trains etc etc, and we know right now they hate the US more than they did on Sept 11th, and if they could strike back then they would do so, so when the power goes out for an extended period and the authorities haven`t given an explanation or managed to resume power then you start to think it MAY be more than just a normal power cut.
power distribution systems have protection and backup built in, it is highly unusual for modern power systems to fail completley , you can re-route power and be informed of failures remotely on the primary grids (and nowdays even local distribution), with modern technology it is almost impossible to lose power for any length of time bar major physical damage to the grid (ie severe storm), and don`t bother saying magnetic storms because that was the first thing I looked up and the EM is below normal, shutting down one or two power stations may happen in a powercut, but if they had to shut down them all then they lost the primary distribution network, and thats heavily protected against accidents and grid-wide failure.
you may have noticed those strange "?" marks on my post, they call them question marks, this is because I was being querilous, not telling people what to think, there is probably a very good reason for the power going out for such a long time, but it isn`t easy to imagine what it could be since power companies have been distributing power for decades and the whole system is designed to prevent anything like a surge excursion or a stalled generator shutting it down, so alternatives are something to explore and gossip about, maybe somebody heard something from a friend who works on the power network or something and would reply to my post, at the moment even the people on the ground don`t know what happened, so I feel I am justified in indulging in a little "what if?", what I don`t get is why you seem to feel the need to attempt to make my remark a subject of scorn or humour just to save yourself from having to think about the possibility that something unpleasant may have happened, I particulary resent being labeled as a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, I do not indulge in mindless paranoia or think Elvis is an alien and still alive, nor do I own a Tesla machine, and I resent being made fun of by somebody who obviously has very little schooling or critical reasoning skills and makes very few contributions to this forum.
magnetic field data ( near realtime)
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/dst_index/page1.html
so thats not the cause huh!
Mentor.